Tm-doped fiber laser mode-locked by graphene-polymer composite

• DOI: 10.1364/oe.20.025077
• Publication Date: 2012-10-18T23:07:57Z
• Authors: M. Zhang; E. J. R. Kelleher; F. Torrisi; Z. Sun; T. Hasan; D. Popa; F. Wang; A. C. Ferrari; S. V. Popov; J. R. Taylor
• Keywords: Mode-Locking

We demonstrate mode-locking of a thulium-doped fiber laser operating at 1.94µm, using graphene-based saturable absorber.The outputs 3.6ps pulses, with∼0.4nJenergy and an amplitude fluctuation∼ 0.5%, 6.46MHz.This is simple, low-cost, stable convenient oscillator for applications where eye-safe low-photon-energy light sources are required, such as sensing biomedical diagnostics.